Several female authors that I greatly respect (Maureen Johnson and Jennifer Weiner to name a few names) are very much against the "chick lit" label. When men write about love and romance and marriage and the drudgery of an entry-level position, it's LITERATURE. But when women do it, it gets a pink cover and is easily dismissed as "chick lit."
And they have a point. Especially because it seems that a lot of women's fiction (by which I mean written by women and having a woman as a main character) gets labeled "chick lit" and dismissed.
But "chick lit" used to mean something, and something that I think is useful. The same way that we use steampunk, high fantasy, cozy mystery, or bodice-ripper historical romance, chick lit used to mean something very specific. It was a term coined to mean a rather formulaic romance that featured the following
1. A modern setting, usually in a large city (usually New York or London)
2. A female protagonist who is late 20s/early 30s and single. She has a job, usually entry-level or administrative support, often in media/publishing
3. A current boyfriend or crush who is all wrong for her
4. Another guy that she doesn't like, but will end up being her one true love
5. Sexy times, but mostly off-page
6. A little bit of adult language
7. A lot of heart and humor
8. Overall a light, "fluffy" mood and tone.
Many people look at Bridget Jones's Diary as starting this genre. (Although this one is a bit smarter than many of the others I've read (and enjoyed) as Fielding seems to have some of Austen's gift of observation of society's foibles.)
Which is my way of saying, when I say "chick lit" (and we probably need a better term than that) I'm talking about something very specific. It's a genre that I do enjoy. Which brings us to today's review...
Jenny Porter is self-employed as a virtual assistant, determined to never have a boss again, after the dot-com she worked for went bust, with managers making out like bandits but the workers didn't get severance, or even their last pay check for hours they had already worked. One of her clients wants her to check out a failing woolens mill in the Scottish highlands.
Jenny can immediately see the mill is in dire straits, but after meeting the workers and the family that owns it, she's determined to find a way to save it, not wanting the workers there to go what she went through. Of course, this is all complicated by Ross Grant, a tourist who keeps showing up at the worst times and makes her go weak at the knees-- when she's not throwing cups of coffee at his knees. And then her boyfriend Henry shows up, determined to undo everything she's been trying to do.
I didn't like this one nearly as much as I wanted to. I liked Ross, the "tourist" who is OF COURSE Jenny's mystery client. But the problem was with Jenny and Henry. I could never figure out why Jenny was with Henry. Their relationship is
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By: Jennie,
on 6/1/2012
Blog: Biblio File (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Fiction, Adult, chicklit, Scotland, Katie Fforde, Add a tag
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By: John Dougherty,
on 1/20/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: injuries, John Dougherty, internal writing, Katie Fforde, Anne Rooney, the writer's view of the world, broken bones, Add a tag
And the reason for that is that on Sunday afternoon I broke my left wrist. Rather badly.
I'm not telling you this just to get a bit of sympathy, although quite frankly that would be nice. Rather, I thought I'd use this opportunity to share with you an opinion that just about everybody - including me - has voiced in order to cheer me up:
"Oh, well, you can write about it in your next book."
To be fair, not everyone has assumed it'll be the next one: only that the experience will be useful source material at some point. But it is intriguing, this general assumption that when a bad thing happens to me I'm likely to write about it.
Equally intriguing, by the way, is that nobody's mentioned money. There's no sense of, "Shame you broke your wrist, but you'll get a few quid out of it when you put it in a story." The feeling seems to be that the writing itself will be the silver lining, a compensation in its own right.
I don't know if I will ever write about this sort of injury in a story; but it's noteworthy that - while it has been and continues to be painful and inconvenient - more than anything, I've found it interesting. It's all an experience: the moment of sharp, sudden, numbingly wrong pain; the first sight of the swollen question-mark of my once exclamation-straight wrist; the jarring pangs as every speed-bump takes me ruthlessly closer to hospital; the strange blurring of the world as the morphine takes effect; the peculiar internal disassociation as the doctor and orderly take hold of an end each of my twisted forearm and pull it back into shape; the hot rush of blood back into my veins after the bier block... I've lived it all, but I've also noticed it all, and noticed it in a way I don't think I would have done, once upon a time before my working life was taken up with stories.
So perhaps Anne Rooney was right, when she said in Saturday's entry that "Writing is our way of making sense of the world" - or perhaps writing teaches us to make sense of the world. Whatever the truth of it, I'm going to leave you with a question posed to me in sympathy on Sunday evening, by the lovely Katie Fforde:
How do people who don't write deal with it, when terrible things happen to them?
John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com
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By: Jennie,
on 6/1/2012
Blog: Biblio File (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Fiction, Adult, chicklit, Scotland, Katie Fforde, Add a tag
2 Comments on In defense of Chick Lit/ Highland Fling, last added: 6/4/2012
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By: John Dougherty,
on 1/20/2010
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: injuries, John Dougherty, internal writing, Katie Fforde, Anne Rooney, the writer's view of the world, broken bones, Add a tag
Please forgive me if this posting takes you longer to read than usual. That'll be because I'm typing it very slowly.
The reason for that is that I'm only using one hand.
And the reason for that is that on Sunday afternoon I broke my left wrist. Rather badly.I'm not telling you this just to get a bit of sympathy, although quite frankly that would be nice. Rather, I thought I'd use this opportunity to share with you an opinion that just about everybody - including me - has voiced in order to cheer me up:
"Oh, well, you can write about it in your next book."
To be fair, not everyone has assumed it'll be the next one: only that the experience will be useful source material at some point. But it is intriguing, this general assumption that when a bad thing happens to me I'm likely to write about it.
Equally intriguing, by the way, is that nobody's mentioned money. There's no sense of, "Shame you broke your wrist, but you'll get a few quid out of it when you put it in a story." The feeling seems to be that the writing itself will be the silver lining, a compensation in its own right.
I don't know if I will ever write about this sort of injury in a story; but it's noteworthy that - while it has been and continues to be painful and inconvenient - more than anything, I've found it interesting. It's all an experience: the moment of sharp, sudden, numbingly wrong pain; the first sight of the swollen question-mark of my once exclamation-straight wrist; the jarring pangs as every speed-bump takes me ruthlessly closer to hospital; the strange blurring of the world as the morphine takes effect; the peculiar internal disassociation as the doctor and orderly take hold of an end each of my twisted forearm and pull it back into shape; the hot rush of blood back into my veins after the bier block... I've lived it all, but I've also noticed it all, and noticed it in a way I don't think I would have done, once upon a time before my working life was taken up with stories.
So perhaps Anne Rooney was right, when she said in Saturday's entry that "Writing is our way of making sense of the world" - or perhaps writing teaches us to make sense of the world. Whatever the truth of it, I'm going to leave you with a question posed to me in sympathy on Sunday evening, by the lovely Katie Fforde:
How do people who don't write deal with it, when terrible things happen to them?
John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com
13 Comments on Ow - John Dougherty, last added: 1/20/2010
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I totally agree with your definition of chick lit as a genre and a fine one, for what's it's worth. It's a very particular escapist kind of fiction and I'm not sure how the label drifted to cover anything by and/or for a "chick."
Exactly -- to me, at least, "chick lit" means I'm getting something very specific (maybe a little too specific -- do they ALL have to work in publishing?) and really, it has as much to do with the overall tone as with anything; books which are lighthearted or funny in general tend not to be taken seriously as Capital-L literature and are demoted to a particular genre (look at George MacDonald Fraser; his books are absolutely brilliant historically, sold like hotcakes, and never won a single literary award; they weren't serious enough).
Thanks for the nice words about my blog, by the way! (I felt sort of weird about commenting on the actual post). I'm trying to work up a slightly more attractive template than the starter one I've got right now and am trying to think of something besides the inevitable head shot, so to speak!